Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

Keeping his own face expressionless and his gait steady, Caelum walked into the open space before the stone circle. He glanced at the watching crowd, then looked at the stone circle. Just inside he could see Isfrael, sitting a wooden throne placed underneath the Earth Tree herself. Standing slightly behind his right shoulder was Shra. Taking a deep breath, Caelum walked underneath one of the stone arches and stopped a few paces away from Isfrael’s throne.

“Brother,” he said by way of greeting, and inclined his head.

“What do you here?” Isfrael asked bluntly, and Caelum suppressed a wince. Should he have asked permission before stepping into these groves? No! Why should he of all people?

“Zared has proclaimed himself King of Achar and -”

“So I have heard,” Isfrael said.

It did not occur to Caelum to wonder how Isfrael had heard.

“So now we have a King of Achar again,” Isfrael continued. “What are his intentions?”

“Who knows what he plans,” Caelum said. “And who knows if your forests are safe. I go to stop him now. And thus to my purpose -” “No.”

“You don’t know what I -”

“I know. Our father asked the same of the Avar, and he was denied as well. I will not help you in this war. We are not a fighting people.” “You owe me loyalty!”

“I owe you nothing! I have never offered fealty and homage, Caelum. Not to you, not to our father.” “Isfrael, please…” “No.”

“What if Zared comes to destroy the forests?” Isfrael studied Caelum carefully. “I do not think Zared would do that.” “But-”

“Zared is your problem, Caelum, not mine. He does not become my problem until I see the sparkle of axes in my forests. I will not send my people out to fight someone else’s war. Do you understand?”

“Then damn you, too,” Caelum said bitterly, and turned his back on his brother.

Isfrael sat and watched Caelum stalk towards the edge of the grove, and then fade out of view as he worked the Song of Movement.

“He has a lot to learn,” Shra said softly.

Isfrael thought for a while before answering. “He will always do his best,” he finally said, “although I wonder if his best is going to be good enough.”

There was a step behind them, and an Icarü birdman emerged from behind the Earth Tree.

It was WingRidge CurlClaw, Captain of the Lake Guard.

“I do thank you,” he said, bowing deeply before Isfrael.

“I would not have helped him in any case,” Isfrael said. “The Avar will never take up weapons and stalk the field of war.”

Isfrael paused and watched WingRidge carefully. “You are an interesting young man,” he said eventually. “And you serve your master well.”

“I am bound to his service,” WingRidge said. “But it has been hard sometimes.”

Isfrael nodded sympathetically. “He will understand that eventually,” he said, then waved the birdman away.

Faraday slipped quietly into the room and sank down into the chair by Niah’s bed. The woman was alone. Over the four weeks of nights that Faraday had come in here, she had occasionally found WolfStar tangled about Niah, but his visits were becoming rarer, and Faraday supposed he had more urgent business elsewhere. Niah was sleeping badly. She murmured and tossed, and by the sheen of the moon Faraday could see that the woman was perspiring lightly. One hand lay resting on her by now slightly distended belly.

No doubt she feared sleep, yet did not know why. Faraday smiled, and prepared herself to enter the dream world. Every night Zenith took another step closer, every night Niah was pushed just that bit closer to the baby. Step by step.

Closer to entrapment. Faraday closed her eyes.

When she opened them again she found herself in the misty world of the shadow-lands.

About her bustled – and yet drifted – the dream reflection of Ysbadd. People moved from shop door to window, from street corner to boudoir, from wharf to store room. All moved slowly, hesitatingly, as if they had forgotten their purpose, and yet somehow all arrived at their destination.

Faraday wandered the streets, ignoring, and being ignored by, all those who drifted past her.

Ah, there was Zenith. Under the awning, its canvas flapping inconsonantly in this most visionary of domains, where she had stopped last night, unable to take another step.

Faraday moved to her side. “Zenith.”

Zenith lifted her eyes and stared at Faraday. Then she smiled, slowly and hesitatingly. She had only been smiling since the plains of Tarantaise. It was a good sign.

Faraday took her hand, and then leaned forward and hugged her. “Niah worries, yet does not understand the reason for it. She walks through her days, her eyes flitting over her shoulder, gasping at breezes in shadows. She is losing, Zenith. She is losing.”

“And the baby grows?”

“Healthy and ever receptive. But we must be quick, for the baby is approaching the stage of its growth where it can be inhabited by a spirit. And you and I know which spirit we want to inhabit it.”

Zenith nodded, and looked down the street. “I feel stronger tonight, Faraday. I can surely walk to the wharves.”

“Good! Zenith, if you can walk to the wharves, then I can find you passage. Imagine, all the way to the Isle of Mist and Memory! For once you need take no steps.”

Zenith gave an almost predatory smile. She could sense victory, and it lent her strength. She had no guilt about what she was going to do. Niah had felt nothing but triumph in possessing her and in spiriting her into this dream-world prison.

“Then let us make a start,” she said and, leaning on Faraday, she took a step forward.

The way was fraught with difficulties. As with each night’s journey over the past two weeks, Zenith found every step agonising, so difficult that her breath wheezed in and out of her lungs, and her fingers dug into Faraday’s arms and shoulders with the strength of her distress. Some steps Faraday thought Zenith was about to collapse, but then Zenith would somehow find the strength to stumble forward. They moved through the streets, each movement a torment, no other thought on their minds but that Zenith must lift one leg and put the next foot forward, and then transfer weight to it, and then find the strength to use it to spring her into another step, and then another, and so onwards, ever onwards. Until finally…

“Faraday, I cannot go on! This must be it for tonight. I am sorry, I cannot…”

“Look, Zenith!” Faraday grasped Zenith’s chin in fierce fingers and forced her head up. “See? Five more steps and we are at the wharf!”

“Five steps too many, Faraday. Tonight I must rest here. I must. I -”

“Then prepare to live your life, your eternity, locked in this shadow-world! The baby grows apace, Zenith. We cannot leave it too much longer. A week, ten days at the most, and some other spirit will inhabit it! I cannot keep them at bay for much longer. Get to the wharf, Zenith, or I swear I will not return tomorrow night!”

Zenith wailed, and Faraday’s heart turned over in sorrow and pity for her, but she let none of it show on her face.

“Move!” she hissed. “Now!”

And Zenith put another foot forward, screaming with the pain, but Faraday urged her on, and somehow she got another foot forward, even though her leg was trembling so badly Faraday thought it would never bear her weight.

But it did, and then they were only three steps from the wharf.

Again Faraday’s fingers bit painfully into Zenith’s face.

“Look!”

And Zenith raised her head and looked.

There, bobbing in the grey sea, was a boat. A small boat, a lantern in its prow. A flat-bottomed ferry.

Zenith took another step, and bent double and groaned with the pain. But again she raised her head and looked.

“Where did that come from, Faraday?”

“It had lost its owner,” Faraday said. “And, lost, it needed a purpose. So I summoned it. Come, two more steps.”

They were two more steps that almost tore Zenith apart, but she took them. She sobbed as she sank down on the ferry’s cushions, and Faraday climbed in beside her and cast off the rope from the wharf.

“I will ride with you a way,” she said, “before I return. And tomorrow night… tomorrow night I will greet you at the pier of Pirates’ Town. Oh, Zenith, there, there. No need to cry, it will soon be over. All will be well soon, I promise.”

She took Zenith’s head and placed it in her lap, and she let Zenith sob until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Faraday sat there a long time, watching the grey waters drift past, lost in the shadow-sea between the coastline of Nor and the Isle of Mist and Memory. She sat there until she felt the approach of dawn in the world of the waking, and then she vanished, leaving Zenith to travel the shadow-seas by herself.